IBM secures $1 billion as the US supports nine quantum companies with a total of $2 billion.

      The US Department of Commerce has signed nine letters of intent to allocate $2.013 billion in CHIPS Act funding to quantum computing firms, in return for federal equity stakes in each of the recipients. This announcement, made by NIST on Wednesday, formalizes an initiative that was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and marks the most significant intervention by the US government in the quantum industry to date.

      IBM is the primary recipient, receiving approximately $1 billion, coupled with a commitment to invest an additional $1 billion of its own into a domestic quantum chip-manufacturing facility. GlobalFoundries, IBM's foundry partner, will receive about $375 million. Three publicly traded pure-play quantum companies—D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Infleqtion—are expected to get around $100 million each, while the silicon-spin startup Diraq is set to receive up to $38 million.

      What sets this package apart is its structure. The government is acquiring equity stakes alongside each grant, similar to the equity component that the Trump administration negotiated in the Intel CHIPS award last year. Following this news, quantum stocks surged, with publicly traded recipients experiencing premarket gains of between 7% and 21%.

      The administration frames the funding as an industrial policy aimed at countering China. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated that the letters of intent aim to “lead the world into a new era of American innovation,” aligning with the broader White House narrative on critical technologies.

      According to NIST, the package includes two domestic foundries and seven quantum computing companies, based on the premise that a quantum industry requires supporting chip-making capacity.

      For IBM, which has invested nearly a decade developing its quantum capabilities from a lab in Yorktown Heights to a data center in Germany, this grant is a validation of its long-term investment. For D-Wave, Rigetti, and Infleqtion, all of which have argued for the past two years that their architectures should be considered viable competitors, the grant is essential for their survival.

      However, the letters of intent do not yet clarify the conversion timeline. A letter of intent is not a binding commitment; the funds will be released based on achieving certain milestones, and the terms of the equity stakes remain undisclosed.

      NIST’s announcement positions the support as aimed at developing “utility-scale, fault-tolerant” quantum computers, which is where commercial viability begins to take shape. None of the recipients have reached that stage yet.

      Politically, this move is clear. The US has spent the last three years observing China achieve increasingly notable quantum breakthroughs from state-funded labs, prompting the Commerce Department to respond with its own state-backed cap table strategy. Whether equity stakes in an industry that has yet to achieve commercialization will yield returns or merely distribute federal risk across nine balance sheets poses an issue that will be inherited by the next administration, regardless of its identity.

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